Search engine inquiries show interests by county

Dubliners are more interested in pubs and movies than residents of any other county, while Corkonians are more occupied with …

Dubliners are more interested in pubs and movies than residents of any other county, while Corkonians are more occupied with electoral matters and Kerry people are obsessed with GAA, according to an analysis of the fastest-rising search terms on Google.ie.

Louth is the county in Ireland most interested in property, while Kildare tops the chart for shopping. GAA and rugby are the leading leisure interests in Kerry and Limerick respectively.

People in Cork were most likely to have searched for details on Election 2007, while Dubliners preferred to seek out pubs and movies.

Galwegians seem to be most concerned about the impact of changes to the learner-driver rules, having been the leading searchers for the term "driving licence".

READ MORE

The hottest ticket on Google in 2007 was the Oxegen music festival, followed by its rival, Electric Picnic. Tickets for GAA, Premiership football and rugby matches also attracted lots of interest.

Internet users are clearly an affluent lot with long-haul destinations dominating searches related to flights.

Australia was the most popular destination, followed by Thailand. More traditional destinations for Irish holidaymakers such as Lanzarote, Turkey and Malaga also figured in the top 10. The most searched for diet in Ireland was the Atkins diet, followed by the GI (glycemic index) diet and the cabbage soup diet.

The fastest-growing search term overall was YouTube, the online video-sharing service, which is a subsidiary of Google.

In common with the global statistics Google released last week, web users in the Republic are increasingly interested in social networking.

Bebo, which already boasts more than a million Irish users, was the second fastest-growing search term, while two social sites aimed at younger audiences, Stardoll and Club Penguin, also showed up in the top 10.

The fastest-growing term related to an Irish web property is Carzone, while at number nine "meteor" seems more likely to refer to the mobile phone company than the space debris. Wikipedia, "addicting games", MySpace and "fantasy football" comprise the rest of the top 10.

The zeitgeist is an aggregation of activity, but the Google Ireland team revealed a nugget that suggests the internet is not causing us to sacrifice our individuality. Up to 25 per cent of the search queries on google.ie each day are new - no one has ever searched for them before.